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Vienna-based Global Rockstar opened in August music rights crowdfunding marketplace, entering the interesting marketplace where companies like Estonian startup Fanvestoryoperate.

The promise of music crowdfunding is clear: Imagine you would have bought 1% of the master rights of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You”: Until today, you would have earned more than 110,000 euros from streaming.

Global Rockstar launched in a public beta-phase in December 2017. In August 2019 it opened its platform to hundreds of thousands of unsigned emerging talents and their fans, who can now become a part of their success.

“In our beta-phase, we successfully funded, distributed and marketed more than 20 tracks from up-and-coming artists with the investment of 300 music lovers from 25 countries, with total investments from fans in the amount of 90,000 euros. This beta-phase was essential to prepare the launch of our innovative model, to better understand the needs of artists and theexpectations of music investors, and to constantly improve our model and our software by respecting every single feedback,” said Global Rockstar founder and CEO Christof Straub, who worked for more than 25 years in the music business as producer, label manager and songwriter.

By investing in music rights, music lovers become “shareholders” of tracks and receive royalties from the commercial exploitation of the master rights for up to the term of copyright (in average 70 years in Europe).

Global Rockstar said the prices for 1% of future net royalties start at 40 euros. “In this case, music investors break even as soon as the track they invested in reaches 1 million streams on Spotify,” it said.

“We aim to become the most artist-friendly music label in the industry by increasing the efficiency of all processes of the business, and by offering the difference to artists.”

Christof Straub, founder at Global Rockstar

The track “C’est La Vie” by the emerging Austrian artist ZOË was funded on Global Rockstar in December 2018 and has reached 2.4 million streams on Spotify until today.

Global Rockstar was founded in 2014 by Christof Straub. After conducting the world’s largest online music contest for 4 years, Global Rockstar changed its model and created the first crowdinvesting platform for music in December 2017 in a beta version. Global Rockstar now opens its platform to hundreds of thousands of independent artists from all around the world.